Thumbing physical pages still beats e-book progress bars

For all the technological prowess of the Kindle, there are
still some things that books still do better (and I'm not just
talking about the sentimental smell of dead trees).

I know I'm someone who should love the Kindle, but after being
initially impressed I've simply not got comfortable with the new
way to read.

The screen is simply amazing -- there is no getting away from
that. But for me, and my kids agree with me for a change on
this, not being able to easily flip through pages, skip chapters
and generally see how far I have left before the end of the book is
a show stopper. I know there is the little progress bar at the
bottom, but this isn't functional enough to replace the amount of
information imbibed through your fingertips by riffling through a
paperback.

Case is point: I recently purchased and read Play One
by Douglas Coupland. I was happily reading away, still with a good
10 percent left to go when all of a sudden I reached the end. The
last chapter, as is Coupland's penchant, was an index of different
zeitgeist terms. This meant that although it looked like there was
still a way to go, I was actually almost finished. If I had had the
real book I would have noticed this as I flicked ahead to see how
much I had left.

This, in part, comes down to how I like to read books -- I slow
down towards the end because I feel like this squeezes out the
maximum enjoyment. But more generally than that, it shows up a
limitation of the slow page refresh of the Kindle, and the design
of the progress bar.

It's actually meant that I've now switch to reading my Kindle books on my
iPad. Not that there is more functionality here, but that the poor
progress bar is offset by the ability to more quickly flick through
pages. To Amazon's credit I was impressed how seamlessly I can now
switch between devices to read books on the iPhone, iPad or Kindle
and always be at the right page.

I will be interested to try out other e-book devices to
see how they handle these issues, but I suspect I will be opting
for physical books for a little while yet.

Poll

Comments

Apple needs to fix this in iBooks - it has a picture of a wodge of pages to the right, but it's a static shot that doesn't change regardless of whether you have 600 or 6 pages left to read. As it stands, it's just a silly visual flourish that simply takes up space.

Mark Brown

Jun 3rd 2011

Totally agree - just got a kindle and I love it but the percentage finished bar is taking some getting used to. I'm not sure it's a show stopper as I'll continue to use the Kindle instead of books but it's a definite negative point. Why did they do this instead of page numbers?

Coombez

Jun 3rd 2011

a tenuous geekdad post - what's it got to do with being a parent (apart from the fact that your kids agree?)

jonno

Jun 3rd 2011

Personally I would'nt call the minor design flaw 'how a percentage bar works on a popular eReader' a show stopper. Actually I was hoping for something more substancial. But maybe that's simply the journalists way to get readers interested.

Marcus

Jun 4th 2011

I've just got a kindle and i am working my way through my first book. I do tend to hate the way i can't see how many more pages i have until the end of the chapter. I'm also sure there must be a way but it would be nice to see the front page of the book when i first open a new book.I think it's little things that take away from the big picture. e-books must be the way forward and i really like some of the elements but little things also get to me from time to time. I'm a teacher and would love to see in the future a library in school full of ebooks, take it to the librarian and the book expires after 2 weeks etc.so the child has to return it.

Renaman

Jun 12th 2011

I bought a Kindle 3 recently. I own an iPad 2 which came first. I find reading books is a much superior experience on the Kindle. However a Kindle needs to be taken for what it is. Technology wise it is not great. I could list the faults from Wifi connectivity with Wireless N and WPA2 to reading issues caused by lack of software design thought. It still feels like a beta product.However, take it as a simple (but expensive!) book reader and you will be happy. Portable, great screen and convenient.